Photo Credit USDA
# 7395
An update to a story mentioned earlier this week by Crof (see Austria: Smuggled bird had H5N1) which told of a couple caught attempting to smuggling 60 birds purchased in Bali through the airport in Vienna.
Out of these 5 dozen exotic birds, 39 had died in transit, and one had tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
Amazingly, these birds had made it through at least 2 other airports before being detected in Vienna.
Today we learn that 5 of those birds have now tested positive for the avian flu virus, and additional testing is underway. This (translated report) from Arkanoid Legent comes from Radio Niederösterreich.
Czech Republic : Bird flu - Five animals were infected
Machine translated article from Noe.Orf :
After the previous week on the Schwechat Airport 60 birds were discovered in travel bags, there are now additional assay results from five of the smuggled from Bali animals were infected with the bird flu virus.
The investigation of the 60 confiscated birds is still in progress, so the tests are not yet complete. So far, the H5N1 virus could be clearly detected in five animals.
The smuggling of birds, exotic animals, and exotic animal products are all too common, and have the very real potential of introducing exotic diseases to new locales.
A few high profile examples include:
- In May, UK customs agents in Leeds twice intercepted hidden caches of live grey francolin birds being brought in from Islamabad (see Daily Mail story Customs officers find live Asian fighting birds in suitcases after smugglers flew them into Britain).
- Incredibly, in 2010, two men were indicted for attempting to smuggle dozens of song birds (strapped to their legs inside their pants) into LAX from Vietnam (see Man who smuggled live birds strapped to legs faces 20 years in prison).
- Last summer, in Taiwan Seizes H5N1 Infected Birds, we learned of a smuggler who was detained at Taoyuan international airport in Taiwan after arriving from Macau dozesns of infected birds. Nine people exposed to these birds were observed for 10 days, and luckily none showed signs of infection.
And just last month, in All Too Frequent Flyers, we saw a Vietnamese passenger, on a flight into Dulles Airport, who was caught with 20 raw Chinese Silkie Chickens in his luggage.
Beyond the cruelty perpetrated against these hapless creatures, and the loss of often endangered species, there is a very real danger of importing diseases via smuggled goods.
It was the consumption of exotic bushmeat in `wild flavor’ restaurants in Guangdong province, China that was apparently behind the introduction of SARS to humans in 2003 (see Bushmeat,`Wild Flavor’ & EIDs).
The trade in exotic pets (whether legal or illegal), and in `bush meat’, provides an easy avenue for the cross-border introduction of zoonotic diseases around the globe.
As an example, we saw a rare outbreak of Monkeypox in the United States in 2003, when an animal distributor imported hundreds of small animals from Ghana, which in turn infected prairie dogs that were subsequently sold to the public (see MMWR Update On Monkeypox 2003)
(Photo Credit CDC PHIL)
This outbreak infected at least 71 people across 6 states. No vaccine is available for Monkeypox, but the smallpox vaccination is said to reduce the risk of infection.
Two years ago British papers were filled with reports of `bushmeat’ being sold in the UK. A couple of links to articles include:
Meat from chimpanzees 'is on sale in Britain' in lucrative black market
The slaughtering of these intelligent primates for food (but mostly profit) is horrific its own right, but it also has the very real potential of introducing zoonotic pathogens to humans.
In 2005, the CDC’s EID Journal carried a perspective article on the dangers of bushmeat hunting by Nathan D. Wolfe, Peter Daszak, A. Marm Kilpatrick, and Donald S. Burke.
It describes how it may take multiple introductions of a zoonotic pathogen to man – over a period of years or decades – before it adapts well enough to human physiology to support human-to-human transmission.
Bushmeat Hunting, Deforestation, and Prediction of Zoonotic Disease
Beyond H5N1, SARS and monkeypox, a few other viruses of concern include Hendra, Nipah, Ebola, other avian influenzas, hemorrhagic fevers, many variations of SIV (Simian immunodeficiency virus), and of course . . . Virus X.
The one we don’t know about. Yet.
